A disturbing new trend is developing in the Arab world; men are committing suicide by setting themselves on fire in a form of protest. A 25-year-old unemployed man died in a hospital last week after setting himself on fire in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria. There has been a wave of self-immolation attempts across the country, possibly inspired by events in Tunisia. Alexandria resident Ahmed Hashem el-Sayed had been unemployed for a year and suffered from depression. It is believed that he may have been imitating the Tunisian man who set himself on fire last month and set off a popular uprising that toppled the government there, said officials. The suicide comes in the midst of an outbreak of such attempts in Egypt. On Tuesday, two men attempted to set themselves on fire in downtown Cairo, just a day after another man soaked himself in gasoline and burned himself in front of parliament. All three survived, however. Protesters in Mauritania and Algeria also set themselves alight in apparent attempts to copy Tunisian Mohammed Bouazizi, 26, whose self-immolation helped inspire the protests that toppled Tunisia’s dictatorial president.
The incidents in Egypt, Mauritania and Algeria reflect the increasing hopelessness among much of the Arab public which has no real means of expressing its dissatisfaction. Self-immolation is a deeply symbolic means of protest. The recent collapse of the Tunisian government attracted calls for change elsewhere in the Arab world. However, protesters face vast security forces under strict regimes that will crack down on any small indication of dissent. Self-immolation as a method of protest is uncommon in the Arab world, where many associate it with protesters in the Far East or the Indian subcontinent. But Egyptian women in rural or poor urban areas have been known to set themselves on fire to protest violent husbands or abusive parents. The self-immolation comes at a time when tensions are high in Egypt over economic hardships. Nearly half of Egypt’s estimated 80 million people live below or just above the poverty line set by the United Nations at $2 a day. The widespread poverty presents a potential threat to stability, along with the absence of any meaningful political reform.
Suicide is prohibited by Islam and on Tuesday, the Cairo-based Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s premier institution of learning, issued a statement stating that the faith "unequivocally does not sanction suicide, regardless of whether it’s an expression of hardship, protest or anger. Bahey Eddin Hassan, head of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, said the growing number of people setting themselves on fire was an indication that Egyptians were beginning to think they can emulate the Tunisian experience in their country. "The reality is that people see their rulers as the ones responsible for their economic setbacks. People think the Tunisian recipe could work in Egypt since they have tried everything else and nothing worked," he said.
